In the Washington Post Magazine, Jason Wilson sets out to learn from the sommeliers of everything. “What the rise of specialized taste education, the cult of sensory analysis, and the wine-ification of everything means is that taste is becoming more and more codified all the time. There are good tastes and bad tastes; not only that, there’s a growing caste of gatekeepers in every field who are keeping score on what tastes great, middling and flawed… We are a people in need of an authority, a higher voice, some guidance — even if it comes from behind the cheese counter.”

In the New York Times, Eric Asimov responds to the reactions to his last Wine School assignment that included three popular, mass-produced grocery store wines. “The exercise was certainly not meant to demean anybody’s choices, or to persuade fans of these wines to drink something different… But if you are curious about wine and wish to dive into it more deeply, you will find it offers a far greater range of pleasures, though more effort than stopping by a supermarket might be required to identify and find bottles with that capacity.”

In Wine Enthusiast, Carly Fisher highlights wine bars and restaurants across the country that are highlighting women winemakers via events, dinners and special sections on their menus.

Since its launch in 1992, Gérard Bertrand’s company has not only achieved a turnover of more than €100m, but has firmly established Languedoc as a producer of fine wines. He speaks with Robert Joseph in Meininger’s.